'Jaitley is leader of House in RS, Azad leader of Oppn'

Union minister of finance Arun Jaitley will be the leader of the House in Rajya Sabha and Congress' Ghulam Nabi Azad leader of the Opposition, chairman Hamid Ansari said on Monday.

Congress had named senior leader from Jammu and Kashmir Azad on Sunday as its leader in the Upper House.

Anand Sharma, another minister in UPA 2, was made deputy leader of the party.

Congress has the requisite number to claim the post of Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, 65-year-old Azad would be the natural choice.

The Congress has the requisite number - 67 members in the 245-member House - thereby meeting the requirement of having 10% of the total strength of the House to get the post of Leader of the Opposition.

The two key appointments come on the back of the party making Mallikarjun Kharge, a senior Dalit leader from Karnataka, the Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha and former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh the party's deputy leader in the Lower House.

Azad, who contested the Lok Sabha election from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir and lost by over 60,000 votes, is a party veteran and one of the senior most members in Rajya Sabha.

The Congress had announced the name of its Chief Whip and whips in Lok Sabha.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, one of the two Congress MPs from Madhya Pradesh, was made the Chief Whip in Lok Sabha, while Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's son and lone MP from the state Deepender Singh Hooda and Kerala MP KC Venugopal were appointed as whips in Lok Sabha.